


Akane At Thirty

by psocoptera



Series: Thirty Fic [1]
Category: Ranma 1/2
Genre: 30Fic, Aging, F/M, Midlife Crisis, Sparring, Turning Thirty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-05
Updated: 2007-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-10 14:53:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2029206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ranma contemplates growing older.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Akane At Thirty

**Author's Note:**

> In December 2007, I was turning thirty in a few weeks, I hadn't finished a story since 2003, and then suddenly this happened. And then I realized it wanted to be the first in a set of thirty stories about characters turning or being thirty, and I wrote and wrote and wrote. [The last third of which are still unfinished as of 2014.] So this one is sort of dedicated to myself, for getting back something I wasn't ready to be done with yet.

Akane at thirty is like a summer cloudburst, as driving, as insistent, and as impossible to strike back. Where Ranma leaps and flips and flashes, Akane simply parts around a hit, as firmly rooted to the ground as the vertical trajectory of raindrops.

Ranma has days when he wonders what the hell happened, days when he has no idea what he would say to the teenager who just wanted to be the world's greatest martial artist. He'd actually met himself, once, or, he supposed, twice now, depending on how you counted - it had been one of those Nerima things - and had fallen back on old habits and entirely foregone trying to explain his life in favor of trouncing his younger self three ways from Saturday. Hey, he needed to inspire the kid, right?

Akane sweeps a leg like a storm front rolling in. There are monsoons in that sweep.

Ranma remembers how simple it was back then, everything bright colors and larger than life. The crazy possibility in every day. At sixteen he had known in his bones, in the very channels of his qi, that he was faster, stronger, cannier, and more bursting with drive than anyone had ever been before.

Her pounding, blinding curtain of blows never stops; Ranma flips back, back and there's a moment, out of Akane's reach, like driving under an overpass, a sudden silence before the thundering drumming resumes.

Some days he wonders if it's his vision that has weakened, if the bright colors are really still there and he's just lost the ability to see them. He wonders what he could be, what he could do, with all his wisdom and his art, if he could still believe -

Akane flows like rain in the wind, just a little out of true, and Ranma flickers here, there, and then stabs out, jagged, forked, like lightening, and she's down. All at once she smiles, and the storm is gone and he's standing in afternoon sunshine.

She rises to her feet and bows, smiling even brighter. Ranma has days when he looks back with yearning, and then he thinks about Akane at thirty, and has no regrets.


End file.
